Upon completing a mission, you will be rewarded with new items, all of which can be used during future missions. These items can be placed in the square, triangle and circle slots, and can be cycle to a new set with the R button. This means that you can go into a battle with a maximum of 6 items. Items can vary from healing, to offensive, to defensive, all of which have a limited amount of uses per mission. If you exhaust the item during a mission, it is lost forever, but if not, it will replenish its amount of uses for the next mission. You will also receive sigils when you complete a mission, which can be used to augment your statistics.

You don’t gain any experience when you finish a mission or kill an enemy. Instead all experience is based on whether you save or sacrifice enemies during missions. Your character is limited to 100 levels in total, so you must decide if you want to play a balanced game by giving your character 50 life and 50 magic levels, or if you want to skew towards one or the other. If your levels are equal, your arm will show as “Neutral”. If you are neutral, you can use green sigils on your arms to greater effect, which will usually provide a health buff. If your life level is higher than your magic, your arm will show as “Divine” and you will be able to use blue sigils to greater effect, which usually provide a defense buff. If your magic level is higher, you arm will show as “Dark”, which usually provide an attack buff.

The main story missions usually end in a big boss fight, although this is not always the case. The boss will be a sorcerer that has become corrupted by magic, and become a monster. Once you’ve defeated the monster, which is quite difficult most of the time, the monster will melt away, revealing the ailing sorcerer. Here you can either choose to save or sacrifice the sorcerer for a big boost in your magic or life statistics. If you save the sorcerer, he/she will become one of your allies, and you will be able to select that person in future missions. You can choose to fight Magusar at any time during the game, but I would suggest leaving this until you have much more experience.

Allies have abilities that are similar to your own, and can level up three times as their affinity to you becomes stronger. This affinity increases, the more you use the character in missions, and each ally has a divine, neutral or dark arm, which determines what type of actions the ally will take in battle. Needless to say, dark allies are more likely to sacrifice dead enemies than the others. If an ally is dying during a battle, you can again save or sacrifice them for additional experience. Sometimes allies can be lost after a mission, and they can be regained by using an amount of “Lacrima”, which appears to vary. These are basically Librom’s tears, and you can rub them off his face after completing missions.

There’s a lot to take in here, but thankfully Soul Sacrifice does a very good job of drip-feeding you this information as you play the game, in order to make sure that you fully understand each aspect of the gameplay. Once you manage to understand all this information, then you can get into the meat of the game. In addition to story missions, there are also a variety of side missions that have their own lore and back story. There is also quite a lot of information relating to the world of Soul Sacrifice within Librom’s page, and you can easily spend hours and hours in this game. When it comes down to it, the main question we need answering is, is the game fun? And this definitely is the case.

The mission-based format means you can jump into a mission, play for a while, and put your PlayStation Vita down for a while. It’s perfect for handheld gaming; however, I still wish that this was an open world title, with a larger story. Graphically the game looks quite good, and although the voice acting can sound a little dull at times, the original score is very good. The combat itself is incredibly well done, although a proper dodge button would have been a welcome addition, as it is quite difficult to avoid certain enemy attacks. Soul Sacrifice is a great game for the PlayStation Vita, but it’s probably not a “killer” app.

8.0

Graphics

Looks quite good, but environmental objects are overused, and textures on the environment don't look that great.

7.5

Sound

Voice acting can sound a little dull at times, but the score and sound effects are great.

9.0

Gameplay

Great gameplay, very fun and addictive, but a shame that this isn't an open world title.

9.9

Replay Value

Loads of replay value, hours and hours of gaming as well as online multiplayer.

8.5

Overall

Maybe not a killer app, but a great Vita title nonetheless, definitely worth buying.